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Today we love: Egloo terracotta heaters

If you get chilly while working late at your desk, or you need a bit of heat during an al fresco supper, the Egloo could be just the thing to give you that soupçon of additional heat to keep you going

Chosen as one of Kevin McCloud's Green Heroes at this year's Grand Designs Live show at London's Excel, the sweet little Egloo resembles a burger in a bun and offers a bit of extra warmth for the price of three tealights. It's very eco friendly and is pretty good value at 60/70 euros.

It's expensive to heat up even just one small room with an electric heater and it's definitely not worth putting on the central heating when it's just you who needs a bit of warmth. So Egloo designer Marco Zagario needed to find a way of not freezing to death when working in his small office late at night - and the words thermal exchange came to mind.

He wanted to design a small portable heater which didn't need any electricity; candles were an obvious low cost heat source, while some sort of clay container was needed for the heat storage. He worked on prototypes and found terracotta worked best for the Egloo, whichcomprises four parts: a base in which up to four tealights are placed; a grill;an inner, and an outer dome. Heat rises into the inner dome which heats up quickly, then slowly radiates heat to the outer dome so that the unit remains safe enough to touch.

Zagario claims it takes only about five minutes for the Egloo to reach the highest temperature (the interior dome would be between 140 and 180 degrees Celsius, and the outer at between 30 and 50), and with four candles, will last long enough to heat a 20-square-meter (215-square-foot) space for up to five hours -- with each candle refill costing about an estimated 10 pence.

Egloos come in a host of colours. Incidentally, reviews from people who've bought an Egloo are mostly pretty positive, saying it does take the icy edge off a small cold room. Obviously you'd need a shedload of them if you wanted to heat a ballroom...